


The Necromancer

by WhyWhyNot



Series: Sins of the Mother [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Blanket Permission, Child Abuse, Dark Magic, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Fucked Up, Gen, House Elves, Inferi, Lestrange Family, Necromancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-10-25 22:22:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17733749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhyWhyNot/pseuds/WhyWhyNot
Summary: This summer, Lestrange Manor has five occupants.If Wynstella has her way, there will only be three on the first of september.(All pureblood families have secrets. It's time to get rid of the Lestrange's darkest one.)





	1. Ami

Ami is still there.

(Of course she's still there. Aglaeca has no reason to stop such a useful mind game, after all.)

Ami is there, but so is Shanks.

(A pet doesn't make it easy to have tea with the corpse of a friend, but it does make it _easier_.)

Wynstella forces a smile, hoping it doesn't look as painful as it feels, and eats a biscuit. Ami smiles back and cheerfully chatters about kittens, but its eyes stay empty.

It reeks, Dark Magic heavy in the air, and Wynstella is very careful not to gag. The biscuit feels like sand in her mouth, and she sips a little of her tea to help it down. 

The tea tastes like spit, and Wynstella swallows a grimace.

(Of course, it's not really spit and sand. Both tea and biscuits are of the highest quality. It's the company that makes them unpalatable.)

The sun is bright, and there are cracks on the back of Ami's hand.

(It does no good to keep an inferi in the sunlight. The warmth isn't enough to kill it, but it tends to degrade their appearance.)

(Maybe the sun will destroy Ami's face enough that Wynstella will stop seeing Amira in her.)

Maybe the Sun will burn Aglaeca's eyes out, and Wynstella will be able to stab her while she's distracted.

(Probably not. But it's a nice fantasy.)

Wynstella smiles harder and takes another sips of tea, and takes comfort in the feeling of the knife hidden in her sleeve.


	2. Chilly

The first time Wynstella met Draco Malfoy, he called her a bastard.

"The older Lestrange girl of a generation is always called Aglaeca and you're not, so Dad says you must be a bastard."

Lucius - in Draco's mouth - wasn't wrong about the name thing, even if he _was_ wrong about the bastard thing. He just wasn't taking Bellatrix 'I do what I want' Lestrange _née_ Black into account. His loss. Mysoginistic prat. _Racist_ mysoginistic prat. Lakshmi, Lee and Granger are worth thirty like him. _Each_.

Wynstella is glad for her name. She doesn't want to share one with her aunt.

She takes another bite of smoked salmon. Delicious, of course. Chilly is a talented cook, and one that Wynstella can trust. 

(Or, more accurately, she can trust her to only poison or spike her food with things she can easily detect or counter, if possible. As nice as they can be, all Lestrange house elves have to obey Aglaeca first.)

Wynstella was hungry. Normally, Chilly would have made tea and biscuits, but with Aglaeca's games, Wynstella is slowly growing to _loath_ them. Hence the salmon.

She likes Chilly. She hopes she can kill Aglaeca without hurting her.


	3. The Sacrifice

There's a bottle of basilisk venom hidden in the bottom of Wynstella's trunk. It turns out to be too far.

\---

Wynstella wakes up with blood on her sheets, and it takes her a few minutes to understand what it is.

She calls Chilly, and there's horror on the house elf's face as she stares at the blood.

"Chilly? Is something wrong?"

The house elf quickly hugs her instead of answering, and pops away without cleaning.

(Something is up.)

The venom. Wynstella should take it. Just in case.

But before she can reach the trunk, Aglaeca is behind her, and 

\---

Wynstella wakes up tied to the ground.

Her ankles are tied together and to a ring afixed to the ground, and her wrists are similarly tied over her head.

She's in the basement. 

There's a cut in her arm.

She's naked, and Aglaeca is painting on her skin with her own blood. 

Wynstella resolutely _doesn't like it_.


	4. Leary

"I suppose I should tell you why you're here. It's traditional to do so, after all."

Aglaeca's voice is exactly as calm, as level, as subtly amused and disdainful as always, and that's worse than if she was screaming, or laughing. 

"You know, you should have been called Aglaeca."

Yes, she knows, but she also knows better than answering. 

"You would have been, too, but for all her support of Riddle's ideas, the madwoman you call a mother is only traditional when it suits her. Do you know why you should have been called Aglaeca?"

No, she doesn't. She never thought the origin of this tradition were important. Apparently, she thought wrong.

"Why?"

Aglaeca smiles. It's utterly terrifying. 

"Because I don't like changing my name. Do you know why I'm doing this?  
\- N... No."

Aglaeca's smile widden.

"I don't want to die."

For some reason, this answer frightens Wynstella even more. Maybe because she just noticed the runes, carved in the ground and filled with too much blood to be Wynstella's, and the feel and taste of Dark Magic in the air, and Courtly and Leary hugging in a corner of the room.

(She thought they had been sold. She thought they were out of here. Anyway, why are they hugging, it's not the moment to...)

(Oh.)

(They're not hugging.)

Leary is holding Courtly's corpse.


	5. The Scavenger

Wynstella is going to die.

Wynstella is going to die, because she recognizes the smell now, _really_ recognizes it, and the only kind of Dark Magic that _reeks_ like that is the kind that involves death and the _wrong_ kind of alive. The kind for which you have to die first.

Aglaeca is smiling while she starts chanting, and Wynstella has never been more terrified in her life, and she closed her eyes and went to fight a basilisk.

And Aglaeca is smiling, until, suddenly, she isn't.

There's a mix of shock and pain on her face, and then there's _anger_ and she twists and throws Shanks against a wall.

Something snaps in Wynstella's head.

"Don't touch him! Don't you dare touching him, corpse-lover! You hear me? Dead-riser, inrotting, staleblood, don't touch him!"

Aglaeca snarls, but before she can do anything, she stumbles, and her anger turns to fear.

"What... What did you do to me?"

Wynstella doesn't know. Wynstella doesn't know, but hopes she will die of it.

Aglaeca falls on her knees, and then on the floor, and keeps screaming at Wynstella until she finally does die.

Wynstella waits a few minutes, and calls Chilly.

(She could have asked Leary, but she doesn't think he's in the right state to help.)

Chilly stares at the body, visibly in shock, fot a few seconds, and hurriedly frees Wynstella from her restraints.

Wynstella runs to Shanks' side.

(There's something wrong with the corpse, like it's putrefied on the inside, and the rot is starting to pour out of the mouth. Wynstella ignores it.)

Chilly is carefully prying Leary away from Courtly, and Shanks is _alive_.

And now Chilly is hugging Leary, and Wynstella is hugging Shanks and reaching for them, and they're all hugging on the dirty floor, and _they're alive_.

Aglaeca is dead, and _they're alive_.


	6. Amira

Later, when they're finally calm enough to leave the basement and sit around the kitchen table, Chilly explains what happened to Wynstella. 

Aglaeca was old. Very old, older than Hogwarts.

And she...

(She stole bodies.)

And every generation, when the elder daughter bled for the first time, she would kill her and take the body for hers.

( _"I don't want to die."_ )

Wynstella shudders. 

(Aglaeca is dead, and it doesn't matter.)

What does matter is the inheritance. Wynstella gets everything. The money. The manor. Chilly and Leary.

Ami.

\---

She piles wood to make a stake. By hand, without magic. It feels right. 

When she's done, she goes to her room. Ami is sitting on the bed.

Wynstella asks her to come, asks her to sit on the stake. She says 'please', as if it mattered, as if Ami ever had a choice. And Ami comes, and Ami sits on the stake, and for the first time, Wynstella doesn't feel horror at the sight of his sightless eyes, just a quiet kind of grief.

She lights the fire.

(She doesn't pray. She knows little of Amira's faith, and doesn't know the words of funerals. She can only hope that her God doesn't hold against the dead the mistakes of the living.)

Ami doesn't scream, and Wynstella stands silent as Amira burns.

It's finally over.


End file.
